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Double Bass broken APTflex-electret

dermihi

dermihi

Feb 14, 2011
38
0
Vienna, AUT
#1
Hi all!

Has anyone here successfully repaired a broken APTflex pickup?
I accidentally ripped the cable out of mine, so I opened it up around the corner where the cable comes out and resoldered the single-stranded cable. I really have no idea how this pickup works, where signal or gounding come from, but it looked like an easy fix. I isolated the soldering point with a little piece of tabe, bent it close again and taped the outside together with a piece of gaffer tape. It made a sound through the amp when I touched it so I installed it again.

The problem is: it ONLY makes a humming sound now when I touch the foiled outside, there is no sound when I "just" play. (Grounding issue? No idea, see above.)

Anyone here who can help?
Thanks!
 
#4
Hi.

First of all:

Piezos are a major PITA to repair DIY style.

You have to have two separate conductive paths on the cable there, one has to make contact with one side of the element, the other...You guessed correctly, on the other side.

IMLE piezo strip DIY repair is seldom a success, the unit may still work, but the frequency response, noise, interference, etc. is usually affected. The disks are a bit more forgiving, but the cystal is still quite heat sensitive, so great care must be taken.

Good luck.

Edit:After reading some more about it, it seems that it's not a piezo, but really an electret film PU. In my book it'll make the repair even more difficult unless there's hefty soldering patches to connect to.

Could someone point me into an article other than sales literature about using electret film in place of piezo element. Doesn't matter whether it's a MI application literature or not.

Regards
Sam
 
#5
Success :)

What I did:
1) Soldered the broken cable to the rest of the cable inside the pickup (see first post)
2) Folded the opened corner back in the original position (flat)
3) soldered the chunks of copper foil on the cable to the copper foil on the pickup

That's all. No idea what I've done wrong yesterday.

Pictures:
DSC_5305.jpg

DSC_5306.jpg

DSC_5304.jpg
 
#6
Hi.

dermihi said:
Success :)

What I did:
1) Soldered the broken cable to the rest of the cable inside the pickup (see first post)
2) Folded the opened corner back in the original position (flat)
3) soldered the chunks of copper foil on the cable to the copper foil on the pickup

That's all. No idea what I've done wrong yesterday.
Click to expand...

Congrats, and thank's for taking the time to snap some pics as well. Those should help someone else in the future.

As for why it didn't work at first, the way I read it, You didn't do the step 3 in order to close the circuit the first time around.


dermihi said:
DSC_5304.jpg
Click to expand...

IMHO, ditch the duct tape, it's somewhat conductive and can cause interference later on. I use vulcanizing rubber tape for such applications.

Regards
Sam
 
#7
Sam: You are right, the first time I thought the pieces of foil would have enough contact just being taped together. Obviously that wasn't true.
Anyway, the pickup is as good as new now. :)
Thanks for the tip with the conductive tape, I will look out for problems!
 
#8
After it sitting thee for several months I finally soldered it back as you suggested. Took all of 5 minutes. yeah-ah.
This is such a killing pick up. Into the Headway with the 4099 or just by itself with some mids pulled, it sounds great.
 
#11
thanks, i've seen his website and his sound samples, i was hoping there would be a USA distributor....

i thought the APTflex sound sample was very similar to the Wood Realist sample he has, but the user reviews seem to convey that they may be less similar than the samples suggest. eager to try one.
 

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